Ah, heck, I was so sure I hadn’t overlooked something that simple, but retrying again more carefully I think you’re both right. Looking at the timestamp of my post, that’s what I get for troubleshooting tired. 😬 Thanks both.
relsqui
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I’m trying to riff on the script from the eye contraption to do something sort of related, but mostly to learn about Lil and Decker. (I’m brand new to both, although I have other lightweight game programming experience.)
I figured out (eventually!) that card.offset has a value in the contraption pupil but not in my other widget because the “card” of a contraption widget is its contraption (which has an offset), whereas for the other widget it’s the actual card (which doesn’t).
However, that doesn’t explain this:

If card.offset is nil, why does subtracting it change the value of the expression? (This is from the listener, but show[]ing the variables from the widget seems to reveal the same behavior.)
I really enjoy that choosing dice for a harvest roll when a few sizes are available is a low key way to judge my own idea. Offered some seeds and a piece of bark to the fae prince, rolled 2d4. Told the barberfrog quartet to resolve their disagreement about what to perform by arranging a mashup, windmill slam 3d8.
I dig it, I’ve been hoping someone would put a good spin on Yahtzee. Love the art, especially the devil reactions. I found it a bit counterintuitive at first that the dice I’m holding, not rolling, are in the center; I expect them to be held back towards me at the bottom. Got used to it easily enough though. Two nitpicks: not sure if I’m supposed to be able to get the same relic twice, but I can (if I pick something from a bag that’s already in the shop). Also, five of a kind should count as a full house! :)
Very fair! Here’s a longer version of the instructions, if it helps:
The goal is to keep driving (with arrow keys) as long as possible. Clear checkpoints by driving through them before the timer runs out; the game ends when a checkpoint timer reaches 0.
The gauge at the top shows how long you can keep driving. To refill it, you need fish. Hit c to cast your line. When you hear the alert noise and see the “!!” hit c again to reel in a fish.
Casting your line uses the momentum of the car, so the faster you’re going, the further you’ll cast. (I think this is what confuses most people.) You also always fish in the direction you’re driving, so you have to line up the whole car to aim. Bite timing and fish size are random, but if I remember correctly, you’re more likely to get a big fish from deep water (the parts that look choppy).
The only thing the difficulty affects is how much time you have to hit each checkpoint. So you can practice steering and fishing on the lowest difficulty and then increase it as hitting checkpoints gets easier. :)
https://relsqui.itch.io/snakeout
Got this silly idea a couple of weeks ago and appreciating how easy pico-8 makes it to go from silly idea to silly execution.

This is a brilliant bit of game design. I love how gently the puzzles guide you into understanding each rule, so far I’ve never felt lost but still feel clever when I get a new one. Do you have any advice about tuning the difficulty in that way? It’s something I really admire in games that do it well but struggle with creating.
this post was indeed helpful for that, and also as a recommendation for this game. :) but how do you open a game in edit mode? I don’t see a way to do that from the web interface, and I don’t know how to search for a specific game in the desktop app.
edit: never mind, found it! I was just browsing through the randomizer at the beginning of the app, I didn’t realize that if I go further into the edit screen I can also search the shared library from there.
This is really fun! I just tried out a bunch of different games, and this is the first one I came back to afterwards because I didn’t feel done with it yet. I like how the different kinds of limited information balance each other out, and all the cute icons. I’m a big fan of minesweeper-but-you’re-on-the-ground type games and there aren’t enough of them!
A couple of wishlist items, in case you’re looking to keep working on this:
I wish there was more variety and sense of progress between levels. Different sizes, shapes, or mine counts would be great, but just visual themes would go a long way. Relatedly, would be fun to find things in the open grassy areas sometimes, whether that was functional or just flavor. If I’m going to have to walk around, I want that to matter, y’know?
A bunch of flag things: I wish I could flag squares without the mouse, although I’m not sure how that would work. As other people have said, it would be nice to be able to flag free spaces. I like that the flagged squares are consistently different colors (I’m using the ? flag to mark free spaces) but I wish the unflagged squares were a third color, so those categories were all distinct from each other.
Oh, and the blinking sprite is kind of annoying, but I do see the problem it’s solving and don’t have a better idea. (Maybe a little thought bubble from the sprite with the number it’s standing on?)
Last and least: a confirmation button for going downstairs would be nice. It’s startling to step onto a new board when I haven’t even seen the stairs yet.
I have a sea captain friend who has been (mostly jokingly) trying to convince me to implement wind direction to make sailing more complicated, they’d be delighted by that last idea. 😁 And yeah, strong agree about the rest, that was definitely in the plans and I just didn’t end up making enough time during the jam for it. Plenty of time now though, so who knows! Thanks for playing. :)
Yeah, I agree both about music and that it’s too easy – I wanted to make sure people could actually get the bossfight, and it was hard to gauge tuning when I’ve been testing with debug settings on, haha. If I find the energy to do more work on it after the jam I’ll be tweaking a lot of that stuff. Thanks for playing!
This is terrific, thank you! :D Glad you had fun, even if it took a little adjusting. There really should be a difficulty level in between Tourist and Adventurer -- I'm not sure if there's room in the cart for it but I'll take another peek and see if I can find it, you're definitely not the first person who would've liked it, haha.
https://relsqui.itch.io/the-fish-and-the-furious
Introducing the Fish and the Furious, a Pico-8 driving-while-also-fishing game. Race to hit the checkpoints while catching enough fish to keep your car fueled! You can even play with a buddy (not pictured here because I'm not coordinated enough to record that).








